Black Jade

like Arras and Solaru and the brightest of the stars.

If you would be freed from burning, you must become fire.

I closed my eyes then, and I felt the hot flickers of the red flame feed the blazing of the blue. I willed this to be. It grew brighter and brighter. I did. My whole being, out from my center into my arms and legs, feet and hands, fairly shimmered and sang with a surging new life. And then, in a rush of joy, a fountain of violet flame seemed to shoot up through my belly, heart and throat, flaring to pure white as it filled the bright, black spaces behind my eyes. For an endless moment I did disappear, into a fire so brilliant that it touched the whole world with an infinite light.

At last, I returned to myself. I sensed a quickness of breath and rushing blood inside Abrasax, and I opened my eyes to see as he did. And I gasped in astonishment. For the auras of the Seven and Atara and Kane, and all those in the room, impinged on each other, and flowed, swirled and shimmered in a cloud of light. This living radiance seemed to be drawn to me as water to an opening in the earth and to change hues as it brightened into a numinous and dazzling glorre. I drew my sword then, and held it pointing up toward the apex of the dome. Alkaladur, too, blazed with this perfect color.

'Fire, indeed,' Abrasax said.

Then he put away his gelstei, and so did Master Storr and the others, and the auras of everyone gathered there vanished from my sight. But my sword's silustria continued burning with an ineffable flame.

'Do you see?' Abrasax said, to Master Virang and Master Storr. 'Do you see? It is as Master Juwain told about Prince Valashu.'

Everyone watched as the glorre illuminating my sword slowly faded to a silvery sheen. I sheathed Alkaladur as I looked at Abrasax.

'That is enough of testing for one night,' he said, smiling at me

Master Storr looked down at Maram swigging his tea and said! 'But what of the others?'

'Valashu is their leader,' Abrasax told him. 'As he goes, so go they. If he can overcome the worst of himself as he has here tonight, then I believe that they will, too.'

'You speak of him,' Master Storr said, eyeing me, 'almost as if he is the Maitreya!'

'No, Valashu is not the Shining One,' he said. 'But I believe their fates are interwoven, as threads in a tapestry. Surely it is upon the Prince of Elahad to lead the way to him. Do you agree. Master Matai?'

The Master Diviner, standing across from me, smiled at Abrasax. And then, in turn, as Abrasax queried the other masters, each of them gave his assent. Even Master Storr reluctantly nodded his head.

'I suppose we must trust Valashu and his friends,' he affirmed.

In the end, I thought, either one has faith in another or not.

'Yes, we must trust them with all our power to trust,' Abrasax said. 'And give them all our help. All the signs point one way.'

'Ah, but which way?' Maram asked as he fingered his beard. 'That is the question of the moment, is it not?'

Abrasax smiled at this, then called out, 'Master Matai — will you show us the parchment?'

The Seven moved back over to the empty table, and my friends and I gathered around them. Master Matai produced a large, yellowed parchment, which he unrolled and laid upon the table for all of us to examine. On its glossy surface were inscribed a great circle and various symbols marking the position of the planets and stars at the hour of my birth. It was, I saw, a copy of my horoscope, which Master Sebastian of the school in Mesh had prepared scarcely a year before.

Master Matai ran his finger over a hornlike glyph representing the sign of the Ram, and he said, 'As Master Sebastian and Master Juwain elucidated in Mesh, Valashu's horoscope is nearly identical with that of Godavanni. Valashu's stars, as they determined, are those of a Maitreya.'

'Then you should not blame him,' Maram half-shouted, 'for having believed that he might be the Maitreya!'

Master Matai shot him a sharp look and shook his head to silence him. And then he went on: 'As we say, the stars impel; they do not compel. There are always other signs. And there are other stars.'

'I'm afraid I still don't understand,' Master Juwain said, resting his elbows on the table to examine the horoscope, 'where Master Sebastian went wrong.'

'That is because he didn't,' Master Matai said. 'On all of Ea, there is hardly a better diviner, especially when it comes to astrology. No, Master Sebastian made no error, at least of commission. But it must be said that an omission has been made, and a critical one at that.'

So saying, he brought forth a second parchment and unrolled it on top of mine.

'Always, at the end of ages, the Maitreyas are born,' he told us. 'And at the end of this age, the last age that will give birth to the Age of Light, or so we hope, the stars are so strong. I have studied this for years, and for years I believed the Maitreya's star would rise over the Morning Mountains. But I have found a brighter one that rose in another land. Twenty-two years ago, now, at the same time that the Golden Band flared as it never had before and has done only once since.'

I glanced at the date that Master Matai had inked onto the parchment: the ninth of Triolet in the year 2792 — the same day as my birth.

Master Juwain studied the symbols inscribed in the great circle, and he asked, 'And for which land has this horoscope been prepared?'

'Hesperu. In the Haraland, in the north, somewhere below the mountains, to the east of Ghurlan but west of the Rhul River.'

'Hesperu!' I wanted to cry out. I could think of few lands of Ea so far away, and none so difficult to reach.

'But we can't journey there!' Maram bellowed. 'It's impossible!'

'So, it would be difficult, not impossible,' Kane said, his eyes gleaming.

He went on to tell us that we could complete our transit of the White Mountains and cross the vast forest of Acadu. And then choose between two routes: the southern one through the Dragon Kingdoms, or the northern route across the Red Desert

'Oh, excellent!' Maram said. 'Then we'll have our choice between being put up on crosses or dying of thirst in the desert.'

I turned to look at Maram. I didn't want him to frighten the children — and himself.

'But think, Val!' he said to me. 'Even if the Maitreya was born in Hesperu, he might long since have gone elsewhere. Or been taken as a slave or even killed. It's madness, I say, to set out to the end of the earth solely according to another astrological reckoning.'

I waited for the blood to leave his flushed face, and then I asked him, 'But what else can we do?'

'Ah, I don't really know,' he muttered. 'Why must we do anything? And if we do do something, wouldn't it be enough to work in concert with the Brotherhood? Surely the Grandmaster has alerted the schools in Hesperu to look for the Maitreya. Let them find him, I say.'

Master Juwain looked over his shoulder at Maram and asked him, 'Have you forgotten Kasandra's prophecy?'

'You mean, that Val would find the Maitreya in the darkest of places?'

Hesperu, I thought, under the terror of King Arsu and the Kallimun, no less Morjin, seemed just about the darkest place on Ea.

'There is more that you should know,' Master Matai said as he pressed his finger against one of the symbols linked onto the parchment. 'The Maitreya's star, I believe, will burn brightly but not long.'

I looked at Maram as he looked at me. Sometimes decisions are made not in the affirmation of one's lips but in the silence of the eyes.

'But we'll die reaching Hesperu!' he moaned. 'Oh, too bad, too bad!'

And with that he hammered his fist on the table behind him hard enough to rattle the teacups and to shake from them a few dark, amber drops. 'Why can't I have at least one glass of brandy before I'm reduced to worm's meat? Are there no spirits in this accursed place?'